"Look here, Sikes," he exclaimed, in a tone that made every one in the shop pause to listen, "you've got a bigger cog missing in you than the old mill has, and it makes you a sight bigger nuisance to the neighborhood. You have lost your reverence for all that is holy. You go grinding away by yourself, leaving out God, leaving out Christ, making a miserable failure of your life grist, and every time you open your lips, your blasphemous words tell the story of the missing cog. If that old mill-wheel makes such a hateful sound, what kind of a discord do you suppose your life is making in the ears of your Heavenly Father?" Sikes looked at him an instant irresolutely. His first impulse was to knock him over with the heavy hammer he held; but the truth of the fearless words struck home, and he could not help respecting the man who had the courage to utter them. "Beg pardon, sir," he said at last. "I had no idee you was a parson. I laid out as you was a drummer." "I am a drummer," answered Marion. "I am a wholesale shoe-merchant now; but I spent so many years on the road for this same house before I went into the firm, that I often go out over my old territory." Sikes regarded him curiously. "Strikes me you've got sermons and shoe-leather pretty badly mixed up," he said. Afterward, when he had watched the sleigh disappear down the road, he picked up the bellows and worked them in an absent-minded sort of a way. "A drummer!" he repeated under his breath. "A drummer! I'll be--blowed!" The incident made a profound impression on Lee. A loop in the road brought them in sight of the old mill again. "We don't want to have any cogs missing, do we, son!" said Mr. Marion, first pinching the boy's rosy cheek, and then stooping to tuck the buffalo robes more snugly around him. The subject was not referred to again, but the lesson was not forgotten. Sunday was passed at a little country hotel. They walked to the Church a mile away in the morning. Time hung heavy on Lee's hands in the afternoon while Mr. Marion was reading. If it had not been for Taffy, it would have been insufferably dull. He had a slight cold, so Mr. Marion did not take him out to the night service. He left him playing with the landlady's baby in the hotel parlor. That amusement did not last long, however. The baby was put to bed, and some of the neighbors came in for a visit. Lee felt out of place, and went up to their room. It was the best the house afforded, but it was far from being an attractive place. The walls were strikingly white and bare. A hideous green and purple quilt covered the bed. The rag carpet was a dull, faded gray. The lamp smoked when he turned it up, and smelled strongly of coal-oil when he turned it down. He felt so lonely and homesick that he concluded to go to bed. It was very early. He could not sleep, but lay there in the dark, listening to somebody's rocking-chair, going squeakety squeak in the parlor below.